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Comment by greatpostman | Hacker News Reader

looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him

It’s all lip service. Nepotism is rampant at FAANG

Having done many interviews around silicon valley, the demographics of companies definitely seem very ... themed. Not necessarily monochromatic for a particular ethnic group, but a small set of ethic groups usually overwhelmingly represented.

And at that, this wasn't a thing that seemed particularly biased towards one theme.

Maybe not the exact place for this, but after a few years of working with "near-shore" development groups in Latin America, I can't believe how white the leadership is. For all who think the US is #1 awful place for non-White folks, just look at Brazil.

Brazilians. I know of one group of ~4 that basically follows the leader (a Director / CXO type) to every position. Whenever he moves, they all inevitable end up at the same exact company within 1-3 months. It's actually impressive how consistent their resumes are going back a decade or so.

That is something that always happens, regardless of nation, race or religion.

To some extent, people don‘t quit jobs, they quit managers.

In the same sense the opposite can be true.

I know many North Americans and Europeans who do the same.

They always travel in groups of five...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-b7-fLOjlY

At a large semiconductor company, the same could be said for many groups: Chinese hiring other Chinese, one group hiring native Americans mostly, others with Hispanic origin…

Human tribalism is, unfortunately, present everywhere. Every country and every company.

True.

At a minor scale, all this is fine. People do hire colleagues from previous jobs or from the same Uni, for example

But there's a limit and managers, etc need to be very aware. You can't just have one person hiring all their acquaintances

A Native American group? I mean damn, that’s gotta be so rare I’d almost support it.

Or did you mean an American company hiring Americans? That’d be pretty rare too.

A lot of US semiconductor fabs are in New Mexico. Some were even built on Navajo land. It's an industry where Native Americans were well represented.

Which fabs are in NM other than Intel's 11x (and maybe Sandia)? Wikipedia [1] doesn't list anything, but I also don't see many smaller, exotic technology fabs on there. I'm really curious where they could site a fab on the Navajo reservation because of how profoundly inadequate most of the infrastructure is even for typical American households, let alone a fab.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

Also the Navajo/Hopi water rights issue is complicated, to say the least.

Yes, this was a local software engineering manager who is "Native American" as in, a native people original to the land, aiming to hire other Native Americans as well as majorly minorities.

As a whole the company reports figures showing mixed diversity within the company, but it is really sort of segregated inside because folks don't really mix within immediate groups or teams. So if you're from a typical Caucasian descent, it's hard to adjust within groups like that. One reason is because it is hard to connect - business thinking is different, world views, work ethics, communication style... so I don't blame folks for hiring similarly. For groups when you "need to get things done" it makes sense, but for creative thinking and problem solving, you really should have diversity within the team itself.

I worked for the same large semiconductor company and saw the same thing play out. It was hinted to me by some mentors that I was in a good position because my manager was White as opposed to Indian or Chinese.

I love when there is a position that sounds awesome but then says something like: "Hispanic or other underprivileged groups are encouraged to apply".

It's legal to say that out loud?

The most charitable interpretation is that they are attempting to increase representation in the pipeline of candidates, such that their unbiased, neutral selection process will naturally produce outcomes representative of their candidate pool.

That’s legal.

In reality, when you have companies literally setting hiring targets on the basis of protected characteristics?

It’s very unlikely that the selection process is neutral to those protected characteristics, which is not legal.

Yes it is, because statistically they do not.

>looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him

I've seen it happen so many times now that I can call it ahead of time. Critical mass is when you get a VP. From there, you go from representational levels to >50% Indian in a matter of months.

Happened at my last company. They hired an Indian CTO and before long, all the management under him was Indian. He basically made life unbearable for the existing leaders until they quit and then brought in someone he knew. Seemed like blatant racism to me.

To be fair: nepotism is rampant everywhere, and has been throughout history. How many groups have you worked in or seen where everyone got recruited from the same set of schools? Where everyone used to work together at some other company?

The difference with what you're seeing is all down to who is allowed to be nepotistic. When south asian engineers were predominantly junior immigrants, you didn't notice anything wrong. Now the casteists are doing the hiring too. But the effect is the same.

Nepotism where everyone hired is the same race is called racism.

Since we're sharing anecdotes and that's good enough for this thread, here's my own:

I'm a white guy - pretty much a typical one. My manager is a white guy - possibly even more typical, follow along North American Dude Stereotypes for both of us.

For most of the last 2 years, he had 8 reports - 3 managers, 3 product managers, and 2 principal engineers (me being one of them).

I was the only white guys out of 8 - the rest were all Indian.

Why?

Because the other 6 were the best people for the job. They applied for it (some external, some internal), and we hired them, cuz they were rad (and still are).

Demographically, that just happens sometimes, including all-Indian reports

If it is, is kept very secret between Indian employees, most American engineers (at least I would) will raise the issue. I don't care how high the is Director, I would just tell him that he is being racist , at his face, if he gets me fired, I would sue the company in a second. I have never seen this non-sense at FAANG in the 7 years I have worked here (Amazon first, then Google).

It’s not a secret? I recall having a discussion on this with a bunch of SV engineers a decade ago at a potluck and almost everyone observed how Indian managers tend to hire Indians at their respective companies.

Oh yeah, I was referring to discrimination in the workplace itself. So far all Indians I have met are amazing people, and I have not seen any type of discrimination against other Indians, otherwise I will whine very loud for sure.

its cause indian managers can have fiefdoms with other indians under them. total power.

I don't know if it's nepotism, but Changi Business Park [1], a tech hub in Singapore, is nicknamed Chennai Business Park [2], for much of the same reason outlined in this thread.

[1] http://www.changibusinesspark.com/

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=chennai+business+park

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